Desktop Products Support

Weather Alert

Beach Haven, PA 18601

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WeatherBug Desktop Application Support

Below are answers to common questions about the current version of WeatherBug’s
free desktop application. If you do not see your question here, please fill out
a Support Request Form or visit the WeatherBug Forums.

WeatherBug was developed with the purpose of delivering live local weather conditions,
forecasts and life saving severe weather alerts from its exclusive network of WeatherBug
Tracking Stations. Today, the mission remains the same. WeatherBug data is used
by…

Consumers: 19 million unique at-home and at-work visitors* a month.

Government: accessible to Homeland Security personnel for plume modeling in the
event of a biological or chemical attack and by over 100 government agencies at
the state and local level.

Schools and School Districts: used in over 8,000 schools across the U.S. for teaching
math, science and geography with real life data.

Broadcasters: used by meteorologists at over 100 television broadcast stations like
ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB and Telemundo, to bring “neighborhood” weather
forecasts and conditions to communities every day.

Since its release nearly five years ago, WeatherBug is one of the top 10 Internet
properties in daily reach* with millions looking to their WeatherBug
desktop application for live local weather conditions, forecasts and severe weather
alerts. The WeatherBug service is available at Weatherbug.com as well as via our partners — NBC, CBS, ABC,
FOX, WB and Telemundo television stations, Netscape, Logitech, HP/Compaq, and America
Online — to name just a few.

For WeatherBug, back in 2000, a desktop application was the right solution.
WeatherBug delivers life saving weather alerts to people in time for them to react,
stay informed and stay safe. For all severe weather, the “chirp”
has become a warning. For many, this warning gives them time to pull kids in from
outside, or sometimes simply plants, call a loved one, or prepare for whatever severe
weather is heading their way.

A desktop application allows you to build a relationship with your audience.
All desktop applications serve a purpose of bringing valuable content to customers,
pushing out pertinent information, and eliminating the time-consuming “search”
aspect of the Web. In this way, people are better able to stay informed of
the world around them.

The frequency of Internet desktop applications has increased dramatically in the
last five years in many categories, including instant messengers, weather applications,
rich media players (e.g., Real Player and Windows Media Player), and so on. Many
of these products are free, supported by advertising, and developed by trusted brands.
Unfortunately, the frequency of Internet properties that are not trustworthy or
forthright in their objectives has also increased in recent years. Because of this,
protecting the rights and privacy of our consumer and business users has become
a top priority at WeatherBug.

WeatherBug is a safe and secure desktop application that delivers live local weather
and life saving alerts to millions of people a month. WeatherBug does not have,
and never has had, the capability to track surfing habits or “spy” on
its users.

It is the advertising sponsors that keep WeatherBug free. WeatherBug found a unique
way to make an ad- supported application “relevant” to each user by
allowing them to choose the type of advertising they see every day within the clearly
specified limits of the WeatherBug advertising platform. In addition, an “ad-free”
version of WeatherBug, called WeatherBug Plus, is available to users for only $19.95
a year. For this price, consumers get all the great features of the free application
plus additional premium features in an ad-free environment.

One of the big problems with the term “adware” is the lack of a standard
definition. We believe that the proper definition of adware is any program that
secretly gathers personal information through the Internet and relays it back to
another computer, generally for advertising purposes. This is often accomplished
by tracking information related to Internet browser usage or habits.

WeatherBug is not “Adware.” WeatherBug's is incapable of tracking the
trends of its customers' Web use or deciphering anything on customers' local or
hard drives. WeatherBug does not “snoop” on its users, nor does it have
functionality to determine what users were doing, where they were before WeatherBug
was opened or where they go after using WeatherBug.

WeatherBug does not have constant “open” access to the Internet. WeatherBug
does not act like a server in any way and does not accept Internet connections.
WeatherBug regularly “polls” for weather information using the http
protocol (tcp/ip port 80). In this way, the WeatherBug acts just like a Web browser
in that it queries a Web server for data that it displays.

WeatherBug had an independent laboratory test the WeatherBug application with regard
to adware and spyware, bandwidth usage, resource utilization, and the uninstall
process. Click on the following link to read the entire report. http://www.testpros.com/weatherbugcertificate1.htm

The following is taken from the report mentioned above…

“Traffic was monitored for 48 hours. The system under test was running WeatherBug
6.0 in background mode. An analysis of the traffic showed the average network bandwidth
to be 10.2 bytes/sec. Traffic consisted of http Gets and Responses which occurred
every 300 seconds (5 min). As noted below, clicking on the WeatherBug temperature
icon to bring it to the foreground entails network activity, but the traffic is
comparable to a browser request to the Yahoo home page. When some of the browser
like features are used, like radar animation or Sky & Telescope, the network
usage is exactly like that of a browser.”

WeatherBug has defined one of the industry's first “Bill of Rights”
for its millions of consumer and business users, and adheres to the strictest standards
relating to clear and meaningful notice, informed consent and user control. The
WeatherBug Bill of Rights can be found at: ( WeatherBug.com/BillofRights ).

WeatherBug works hard to protect the rights of consumer and business users and is
a member of the Online Privacy Alliance (privacyalliance.org). In addition, checkyourcomputer.org, was launched earlier this year to help educate
and protect consumers' online.

We are sorry to hear you wish to uninstall WeatherBug. Please read all the directions
below to remove the program.

Please note that if you are a PLUS user, your account will remain active. If you
are a PLUS user and wish to prevent future billing, please send an email to WeatherBug
Support notifying us that you wish to prevent future billing.

To begin the WeatherBug uninstall process, you must MAKE SURE the program is not
running. If there is a WeatherBug icon / temperature visible in the lower right
corner of your screen, right click on it and select "Exit WeatherBug".

To permanently remove the WeatherBug from your system after you have exited the
program:

Click START (from lower left of computer screen)

Select SETTINGS and CONTROL PANEL or just CONTROL PANEL depending upon your version
of Windows.

When uninstalling older versions of WeatherBug a small file, MiniBug.dll was left
behind. This is a download manager that is used in exactly the same way that Macromedia
manages the download of Shockwave, and other software developers manage the downloading
of their software. MiniBug.dll has absolutely no capabilities to display any advertisements
and can be safely removed after WeatherBug is installed without affecting the WeatherBug
application. In fact, in response to questions on this issue, we are making sure
that this file gets removed automatically once the full WeatherBug has been installed
so as to avoid user confusion.

All WeatherBug emails include an unsubscribe link. If you wish to unsubscribe your
email address, you will need your WeatherBug Registration ID. Because there are
several different categories of emails we send, you may need to unsubscribe from
more than one category. Please make sure to unsubscribe from ALL categories if you
do not wish to receive any emails from WeatherBug.

Right click the WeatherBug icon in your System Tray (the bottom right hand corner
of your screen)

If you have uninstalled your WeatherBug and are unable to retrieve your Registration
ID, please send us a Support Request
Form and be sure to provide the email address to which you are receiving emails.
A representative in our customer service department will process your request within
48 hours.

Please note that WeatherBug does NOT share, sell, rent or lease your email address
to our sponsors. If, however, you clicked on a sponsor's ad or entered your
email address at their site and wish to unsubscribe from sponsor emails, please
contact the sponsor directly or click the Unsubscribe link that may be at the bottom
of their emails.

(If you feel that you are experiencing an issue due to a firewall, adblocking or
antivirus software, you may wish to visit your vendor's website for information
on how to review and/or change your current settings).

If WeatherBug is not showing UPDATED current conditions or is displaying an error
message regarding internet activity, please make sure you are online

If you are online, please ensure that any firewall, antivirus or ad-blocking software
is set to allow WeatherBug access to the internet.

Enter the URL deskwx.weatherbug.com into the firewall or software to give WeatherBug
full access. (note, no www or http:// is required before the deskwx address)

After you have done this, please shut down your computer and restart it to allow
the firewall, adblocking or other software the opportunity to recognize this change.

It's also possible that the weather station you are connecting to may be temporarily
down. You can select a different station by clicking the Change Location button
on your WeatherBug, typing in your ZIP Code and clicking "Go", then choosing another
station and clicking the "Set Location" button.

To keep WeatherBug from automatically opening to full screen when your computer
boots up, click on the Preferences button and choose the Connection tab. Uncheck
the box "If internet connection is active…." Click OK at the bottom of the
window and reboot your computer and this should correct the issue.

If you wish to completely disable WeatherBug when your computer boots up, go into
Preferences and uncheck "enable WeatherBug to receive NWS alerts at Windows startup".
This means WeatherBug will NOT open at all when you boot up- you will have to manually
open the program for it to run. We DO NOT recommend this as you will be unable to
receive potentially life-saving weather alerts. If you disable it, anyone who wants
to use WeatherBug must click the ladybug icon to open the program manually (thus
you won’t get alerts until someone opens the program).

Yes. WeatherBug is supported by the advertisers that appear on your WeatherBug.
We also have a WeatherBug Plus version for a small annual subscription fee that
is advertising-free and has extra features such as PlusCams, MyLocations, Historical
Data and more! To subscribe to WeatherBug Plus and for pricing information go to
the WeatherBug Store.

The background and color format of WeatherBug varies with the sponsor selected as
each sponsor has their own 'theme'. Sponsors change at least every 2 weeks and you
will be prompted at that time to select a new sponsor if you haven't changed sponsors
before then.

Please click SITE MAP and then click on the "Select a new Sponsor" link at the bottom
of the Weather Fun category.

Background (when your WeatherBug display is minimized to be next to the time in
the bottom right hand of your computer screen):

Makes weather data update every 1 hour.

For both background and foreground, WeatherBug makes alert information requests
every 5 minutes with total data size (in/out) averaging 275Bytes each way, and makes
forecast information requests every 2 hours, with data size of approx. 275Bytes
each way.

Each weather data request (in/out):approx. 375B.

Each ad banner may consume approx. 10KB.

The bandwidth consumption is:

Foreground first 1 minute: up to 10kb/sec

Foreground after 1 minute or Background: 39bits/sec.

All the background and branding images are cached. If the user clicks on a Tab,
it will load tiny Web pages and ads may rotate, this may increase the bandwidth
in the short term, but after that it will use the same bandwidth as described above.

Since most of the users bring WeatherBug to the foreground for only a short time,
it should not cause any bandwidth issues with the network.

To remove the WeatherBug Toolbar powered by MySearch, please click the arrow next
to the word SEARCH on the toolbar and choose Uninstall WeatherBug Browser Bar.

If you have an older version of the browser bar, please click START button at the
bottom left corner of your screen, then click Settings or Control Panel. Open the
Control Panel and click Add or Remove Programs and look for "WeatherBug Browser
Bar powered by MyWebSearch", click it and uninstall it.

WeatherBug and the Browser Bar are NOT spyware or anything of this type. Click Here for more info. Both applications-WeatherBug and the
WeatherBug Browser Bar never in any manner "snoop" on user behavior or in any way
track, record or follow your movements when using the application, entering it or
exiting it.

There are two main reasons you may not be getting live data. First, you may not
have been connected to the internet at the time of the problem. Second, there was
a firewall, adblocking or antivirus software causing a conflict with WeatherBug.

If you are having a problem with your Forecast, Alerts, Camera, Radar, and Travel
pages not loading, please note the following solutions.

Solution 1:

Make sure you are connected to the internet. WeatherBug needs to have an internet
connection to access live weather data.

Solution 2:

Right click your WeatherBug icon in the system tray (lower right hand corner next
to your computer's time) and select "Exit WeatherBug" then restart by clicking your
Windows "Start" button and then scroll up to WeatherBug, and click the icon to restart
WeatherBug.

Solution 3:

You may need to clean out your computer's cache / cookies. Open an Internet Explorer
browser page. Click on "Tools" and then "Internet Options". Under the Temporary
Internet files option, select "delete files" and then click 'OK'. Next select "delete
cookies" and click 'OK'. Then right click your WeatherBug icon in the system tray
(lower right hand corner next to your computer's time) and select "Exit WeatherBug."
Finally, restart WeatherBug by clicking your Windows "Start" button and then scroll
up to the WeatherBug icon, and click it to restart the program.

Solution 4:

It is possible that your Forecast, Alerts/Severe Weather, Camera, Radar, and Travel
might be blocked by the following software:

Firewall

Ad-blocking

Parental Control

Content Advisor (Internet Explorer)

Privacy Guard

**Several of these components are bundled together in the popular Internet Security
programs.

Enter the URL deskwx.weatherbug.com (note- no www or http required) into your allowed/approved
sites list within your software program. Next, right click your WeatherBug icon
in the system tray (lower right hand corner next to your computer's time) and select
"Exit WeatherBug" then restart WeatherBug by clicking your Windows "Start" button
and then scroll up to WeatherBug, and click it to restart.

If you have McAfee, please make sure to "allow ads" as this may also fix the issue.

If you are unsure of how to add the URL to your approved sites list, you should
contact the provider of the software program for assistance.

Up to 4 times each day, the National Weather Service updates regional forecasts.
Your WeatherBug 6.0 will alert you to these updates when they occur by displaying
a small notice in the system tray. A double chime will sound to let you know the
forecast has been updated in addition to the balloon notice as seen below:

You can turn off the audible alert or set it not to alert you during certain time
periods, such as at night by clicking the Preferences button at the top of your
WeatherBug. Click the Forecast Options tab, then CHECK the Active Notification Silence
Time box- it should be empty when you first reach the page. You can then adjust
the time that you want the sound to be off, or you can select "Off All Day" if you
do not wish to have the forecast alert you when it updates. Click OK and your preferences
will be set.

If any weather information is showing as "N/A", our team is already aware of the
fact that this data is currently unavailable and has contacted the station owners.
We will work with our station contacts to bring this data back online as soon as
possible. If the weather station you are connecting to is from an airport, these
stations do NOT update live and therefore we don’t show the wind conditions since
they could be up to 1 hour old. All 8000 WeatherBug stations however should normally
show LIVE wind conditions, so the N/A indicates a problem at that station’s wind
sensor.

Please provide us with the following information so we can investigate the issue
immediately:

the ZIP Code of the station and the day you noticed the problem;

the Weather station ID (the name of the location such as the school, airport, etc.);

a short description of the problem you believe the station may be experiencing

For example: Jones Elementary School in Allentown, PA 18104 is displaying no rain
even though it is raining on (today's date).

PLEASE NOTE: If any weather information is showing as "N/A", our team is
already aware of the fact that this data is currently unavailable and has contacted
the station owners. We will work with our station contacts to bring this data back
online as soon as possible.

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. With over 8000 stations in our
network, we realize that occasionally a station may have reporting issues. We have
a technical support team dedicated to addressing these as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, click the Change Location link at the top of the main screen and
enter your ZIP Code and choose a different station and click OK or SET LOCATION
to set your WeatherBug to a new station.

If WeatherBug is not showing UPDATED current conditions, it may not be connecting
to the Internet for updates.

If you are online, please ensure that any firewall, antivirus or ad-blocking software
is set to allow WeatherBug access to the internet.

Enter the URL deskwx.weatherbug.com into the firewall or software to give WeatherBug
full access. (Note: no www or http:// is required before the deskwx address)

After you have done this, please shut down your computer and restart it to allow
the firewall, adblocking or other software the opportunity to recognize this change.

It's also possible that the weather station you are connecting to may be temporarily
down. You can select a different station by clicking the Change Location button
on your WeatherBug, typing in your ZIP Code and clicking "Go", then choosing another
station and clicking the "Set Location" button.

To get temperature for your location next to the date and time, simply access the
Notification Area overflow box by clicking on the up arrowhead in the taskbar. Then,
drag the WeatherBug temperature reading from within the overflow box into the Notification
Area next to the date and time. ("Notification Area" - in earlier Windows operating
systems this was known as the System Tray.)